there was better than being in here.
“I don’t know if I can hold the spell long enough, even if you gather the magic for me,” Al said. “My head’s really spinning. It’s hard to concentrate.”
“Well, our lives depend on it, so you’d better hope you can keep it
together,” I said sharply. “Unless you can use your compulsion spell to make them let us go.”
She shook her head miserably. “That takes even more concentration.”
“All right, then. You’re making us invisible.”
“But they’re going to trade us for ransom, right?”
I swallowed hard and forced myself to hold on to my patience. Al had been unconscious for hours and was still all fuzzy-headed. She hadn’t had the time I’d had to work out just what was going on, and what the eventual conclusion would be.
“Think it through, Al. We know who they are. If they let us go, we’ll tell, and they’ll be arrested. They can’t let us go.”
“Gary wouldn’t hurt me!” she protested without an enormous amount of conviction.
I wanted to slap some sense into her—hello, the guy slipped you a roofie and is holding you for ransom!—but I had a better chance of making her see sense if I left Gary out of it. “Maybe Gary wouldn’t, but Tom would, and I’d bet on him to win any argument.”
A tear trickled down Al’s cheek. I had no idea what she could possibly have seen in a pathetic loser like Gary, but my lack of comprehension didn’t mean she wasn’t in pain at his betrayal.
“He wasn’t like this when we were dating,” she told me, but of course I didn’t believe her. “I knew he’d had a drug problem when he was younger, but he’d kicked it. He was clean, and he was a nice guy.”
Drugs and alcohol can do a lot of rotten things to a person, but I was pretty sure they didn’t turn nice guys into guys like Gary overnight. Maybe he’d done a better job of hiding his creepy side when he was clean—surely he must have had some redeeming qualities to attract Al—but he’d still been a creep, even if Al couldn’t see it. I kept my opinion to myself and started to stand up, ready to get this show on the road. Al grabbed my arm to stop me.
“Dana. I’m sorry. About everything. Especially about the compulsion. It was a shitty thing to do.”
I agreed wholeheartedly, and I wasn’t much moved by her apology. If Gary had been anything at all like the prince she’d imagined, she wouldn’t have been sorry about compelling me. Being sorry only because things had gone so horribly wrong didn’t buy her any brownie points.
“Let’s just get out of here, okay?”
Al sniffled delicately and dabbed at her eyes, but she nodded and let go of my arm. I took a deep breath and hefted the paint can, wishing it were full. Our plan would be doomed before it got started if I couldn’t break the glass out of the window.
“Here goes nothing,” I murmured to myself.
I crept across the attic floor, my heart pounding and my mouth dry. There were about a million things that could go wrong, but I couldn’t allow myself to think about them. This was our best shot at staying alive, and we had to take it.
Steadying myself, I put both hands on the handle of the paint can and swung it like a pendulum to work up some momentum. Then I slammed it into the window with all of my strength.
Chapter Six
The window shattered, sending a spray of glass everywhere. I turned my face away and closed my eyes, but most of the glass shards went out instead of in.
Humming to gather the magic, I dropped the paint can and hurried back to where Al was sitting. I heard muffled cursing from downstairs, and then the pounding of footsteps on the stairs as I crouched beside Al and waited.
“Don’t cast until they’re at the door,” I warned her. “Save your strength.”
Sweat shone on her brow, and her eyes were too wide, but she nodded her agreement. Our captors reached the head of the stairs, and one of them tried the door, expecting it to open easily. He said something foul, and I recognized Tom’s voice. Luckily, he was making such a racket there was no way he could hear my nearly silent humming. I would keep gathering magic as long as there was enough noise to cover me, and then I’d have to hope the magic didn’t lose interest too soon. Tom pounded on the door with what sounded like his shoulder—he’d get more power with a kick, which I suspected he’d figure out soon enough.
Beside me, I saw Al go invisible right as the door burst open. I had to trust that she’d covered me with her spell, too, because I could still see myself.
The overhead light flipped on, and Tom looked frantically around the attic.
He was brandishing a wicked-looking knife, and I doubted he had any qualms about using it. He took in the discarded zip ties and duct tape, then hurried to the broken window and craned his head out. Gary entered the room and started poking around in the corners, though there wasn’t any nook big enough for the two of us to hide in.
“D’ya see ’em?” Gary called, and Tom withdrew his head.
“They ain’t splattered on the pavement,” Tom growled, his composure
shattered, his eyes wild-looking. “Come on!”
He headed for the door at a sprint, and Gary followed. Beside me, Al shuddered and dropped her spell.
Step one of our plan had succeeded, but we had plenty more steps to get through before we were safe. “Let’s go,” I said, putting my arm around Al’s waist and helping her to her feet. She staggered even with my support, and her dress was drenched with sweat.
“I can walk!” she insisted when I gave her a worried look. It takes a lot of strength to cast magic, and Al hadn’t had a whole lot of strength when we got started. I hoped like hell she wouldn’t run out anytime soon.
I supported her all the way to the stairs, but they were too narrow for us to go down side by side. I let her go first, steadying her as best I could with a hand on her arm. She clung to the banister like a lifeline. I wanted to run, but a walk was all Al could manage.
“Hurry,” I urged her. I had no idea how much time our diversion had gained us. How long would Tom and Gary run around the neighborhood looking for us before realizing that they had to have been duped somehow?
Al tried to speed up and almost took a header down the stairs, but we eventually made it down to the second floor and rounded the landing to the first.
And that’s when things started to go wrong.
Gary suddenly appeared at the base of the stairs, scowling up at us. “No fair using magic, Althea,” he said reprovingly.
“Gary, please,” she whimpered, clinging to the banister for support, but I had a better idea than pleading, seeing as Al was ambulatory and Tom and his knife weren’t in sight.
I squeezed past her on the stairs as Gary started climbing toward us.
“Be good girls and get back in the attic,” he said. “No one has to get hurt.”
I disagreed.
If it had been Tom climbing the stairs toward us, I might have had to rethink my strategy. Tom had the look of a hardened criminal to him, and although I was certain he would underestimate me as much as Gary did, he might be more prepared to deal with any threat. Gary, on the other hand, didn’t even realize a threat existed.
I put myself between Gary and Al, holding on to the banister for extra stability. Then, when the stairs put Gary’s head at just the right height, I lashed out with my foot.
If he’d been prepared for the possibility of an attack, or maybe even if his reflexes hadn’t been slowed by whatever he was on, it probably wouldn’t have worked. A good kick takes a bit of time to develop, and an experienced fighter can usually avoid them. But Gary wasn’t an experienced fighter.
My kick connected with his face, snapping his head back sharply. Behind me, Al gave a muffled cry as Gary crumpled and slid down the stairs. We didn’t have time for her sentimentality or squeamishness, so I reached back and grabbed her arm, pulling her along with me as I descended and keeping a careful eye on Gary.
